


On the importance of names

by indoissetep



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M, REALLY slow, Slow Burn, Stormpilot, mentions of character deaths, mostly character study, references to Before the Awakening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 08:53:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5961484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indoissetep/pseuds/indoissetep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many names for Finn to memorize in his new life. They're a lot to take in, but are better than two-letter-four-number designations that all sound awfully similar. Finn learns that each name has a history and a wealth of emotions attached to it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. FN-2187

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this turned out being far longer than I had originally intended, but it was a labor of love.
> 
> Come find me on Tumblr, @indoissetep.

 

He was drowning.

Unconciousness clung to him, liquid and impossibly dense, and he struggled against it for what felt like a lifetime. Every time he got close to breaking the surface, he was pulled back down, as if by waves rolling over him. He could sense the light of day above him, could almost taste the air, but he could not reach it.

He was burning up.

His back felt like it was resting on red hot coals, skin melting away and flesh charring, and there was a terrible searing pain on his right shoulder. He tried to move, to will his muscles to roll away from the burning at his back, but his body wouldn’t respond beyond a few feeble spasms.

He was trapped.

Voices reached him through depths of confusion. He couldn’t make out their words, but he knew that they were asking him questions, insistently and urgently.

He would give them nothing.

Who were _they_? The Resistance? The Republic? Some other post-Imperial faction bent on eliminating the First Order and claiming all the chips for itself?

It didn’t matter. He would not break under questioning. He had been well instructed.

“Designa-“ his throat felt like an open wound, and his tongue was a dead slab of meat. He put every ounce of energy in his body into getting the words out. “Designation FN-2187. FN-Corps, 3rd Division.”

His eyes were half open, but he could not see. The glaring light shot pain through his skull, so he squeezed his eyes shut again.

The voices reached him again, more aggitated now.

The harsh smell of chemicals burned his nostrils, and he had an irrational fear that it would burn a hole right through his lungs, straight through his body to join the fire at his back.

He would die before he betrayed the First Order. He would remain loyal to the Order to his last breath.

No, not to the Order. To the other troopers. His squad. His own. Their features materialized briefly through the inky darkness. A flash of red hair. Bright hazel eyes. A scar against dark skin.

FN-2199.

FN-2003.

FN-2000.

And him.

“Designation FN-2187,” the words came a little more easily this time. They were all he would ever give them.

He hoped that death, or at the very least unconciousness, would come soon. He knew that this was his only hope of escape from the pain.

No one was coming to rescue him.

He was just a stormtrooper. He was expendable, and his usefulness was spent.

Still, he refused to be broken.

Suddenly, a new sensation, strikingly different from the ones that came before it. A pressure and a warmth against his left hand. Soft, comforting.

A voice sounded closer to his ears now, and he could almost give it a name, a face.

“Finn,” the word cut through his pain and confusion like a beam of light.

Yes, that was it. He remembered now.

His name was _Finn_.


	2. Rey

 

The next time Finn resurfaced, it happened with a sudden start and a name bursting from his lips.

“REY!”

He shot upward and immediately fell back down, pain cutting through his back like the muscles there were being shredded. A cold hard hand pressed against his chest, holding him down forcibly. He tried to struggle, to push the hand off him, but he was too weak.

_Rey. I have to find Rey._

“Please remain horizontal,” said a soft voice above him, in stark contrast with the hand that still held him firmly against the bed.

A bed. He was on a bed. The space around him came slowly into focus. It was too bright, too warm. Nothing like Starkiller, like the forest.

“Rey... Where’s Rey?” he rasped, pain still making him dizzy.

“Please remain horizontal,” repeated the calm voice above him. It was metallic, artificial, and so was its owner. A medi-droid.

“Rey is perfectly fine, Finn. Please try to calm down,” a different voice now, this one belonging to an older woman who had apparently just walked into the room.

Finn assumed she was a doctor. Resistance.

He was on D’Qar.

The doctor nodded at the medi-droid, which removed its hand from Finn’s chest and backed away a couple of steps.

“I’m Dr Kalonia, Finn,” she was standing next to his bed now, and Finn could see her face more clearly. Professional, but kind. “How are you feeling?”

 _Like I’ve just been put through a garbage compactor_ , he thought. But he could not allow himself to get sidetracked.

“Where is she?” he demanded.

“Rey?” Dr Kalonia paused in the act of running a small beeping scan above Finn’s chest. “She’s left. To find Luke Skywalker.”

For a moment the name sounded like complete gibberish to him. Then, the next moment, everything clicked back into place.

“Skywalker? But... The map...”

“We were able to piece it together right after the attack on Starkiller base,” Dr Kalonia pressed a button next to Finn’s bed, causing the mattress to fold slightly, bringing Finn to a halfway seating position. “General Organa decided that Rey would be the best person to go after him.”

Finn allowed this information to sink in, and his head to sink fully into the pillow. He realized that he had been straining to hold it up and his neck felt sore. Relief spread slowly over his body.

Rey was safe.

She had beat Kylo Ren somehow and she was _fine_.

“That girl stayed by your bedside for a week,” Dr Kalonia was saying, “I had to kick her out at the end of each day or she would have spent the night here, too. In the end, I think the General finally managed to convince her that her staying here would not expedite your recovery.”

Finn felt a bit guilty for worrying her like that, but the thought of her staying by his bedside, watching over him caused warmth to bloom inside his chest.

“Not that that was the end of my problems,” Dr Kalonia continued in a disapproving tone, but Finn noticed that the corners of her lips were twisting up ever so slightly, “I then had to start kicking Commander Dameron out at the end of each day.”

Finn’s chest grew warmer.

Poe had been keeping him company, too, probably accompanied by a fussing BB-8. Finn smiled to himself until another thought crossed his mind.

“Where is Poe now?”

“He’s on a scouting mission... Oh, somewhere in the Anoat sector, I think. He should be back soon,” she concluded, reassuringly.

Seeming satisfied with her assessment of Finn’s present condition, Dr Kalonia moved away to look inside a chromed cabinet in the corner of the room.

Finn allowed his eyes to close, giving in to the weariness that had been tugging at them ever since he had awakened. He could rest now, knowing that both his friends were safe and sound. That _he_ was safe and fairly sound. 

“Oh, and Commander Dameron asked me to give you this in case you woke up.”

Something soft and heavy plopped down on Finn’s chest, and he opened his eyes to look at it. It was light brown, with some read, the worn leather supple in Finn’s hands.

He turned the jacket over and saw that a long strip of slightly darker leather had been patched onto the back. Not bad, all things considered.

“I think he mended it himself. I was quite impressed,” Dr Kalonia said with a fond smile.

The warmth in Finn’s chest seemed to decide to take up permanent residence there.

 


	3. Shara and Kes

 

Poe hadn’t lied, the view _was_ nice.

From their vantage point on top of the hill, they could see far over the thick green sea of trees that stretched around the Resistance’s base. The existence of the base itself was only betrayed by a few protruding antennas and by the smooth gray surface of the landing strip. The native forest provided them with some much-needed cover against prying enemy eyes.

Poe had dragged him up the hill – slowly, for Finn still felt slightly unsteady on his feet, and his back still bothered him at times – with instructions to “take it all in, ‘cuz they would be moving soon and the scenery around their new base would be far less interesting”. Poe had refused to tell Finn the exact location of their new base, claiming that it was classified and also a surprise.

As soon as they reached their destination, Poe plopped down on the grass and stretched out, perfectly content to bask in the sunlight. It was rather nice sunlight, warm and enveloping, but not too hot or too bright on the eyes. Nothing like the hellish glare of the Jakku sun.

Finn preferred to stay seated, not wanting to risk lying down on the ground and then not being able to get up again.

_Wow, look at you. Old at twenty-three._

Dr Kalonia assured him that he would be back to his old self in a few more weeks, but Finn still recoiled from the idea of not being in top physical shape, for however long a period. A lifetime of fear of being sent into medical and never coming back still whispered in his mind and filled him with cold dread at times, even as he reminded himself that that was not how things were done in the Resistance.

Trying to put such thoughts out of his mind, Finn leaned back on his hands, tipping his head back to watch the few sparse clouds roll lazily across the sky.

The two of them stayed like this for a long while. Their companiable silence was only occasionally interrupted as Poe pointed out some brightly-colored flying creature whose name he wasn’t entirely sure of, or a Resistance ship, whose names he all knew by heart and at a glance.

“You really like it here, don’t you?” Finn finally asked, after what felt like hours.

“Yeah,” Poe’s eyes were closed now, head pillowed in his hands, and a lazy smile stretching over his face, “it reminds me of home, back on Yavin 4.”

A second passed before the name clicked in Finn’s mind.

“Yavin 4?” he asked, with raised eyebrows, “The site of the first Rebel base?”

“Yup, that’s the one,” Poe grinned brightly up at him, proud that Finn knew about his homeworld, “My parents helped establish a new colony there, not long after the Battle of Endor. After they decided to retire from the fight.”

That was new to Finn, too.

“Wait, your parents were members of the Rebel Alliance?” then, following Poe’s nod, “Would I have heard of them?”

He thought for a second that Poe might find the question weird. That he might not like to think that Finn would have heard about his parents in the context of his First Order education. If Poe thought so, though, he didn’t show it.

“Nah, I don’t think so. They did some great things, but I don’t think they ever made it into any military history books. Probably for the best.”

Finn turned these new pieces of information over in his mind. It made a lot of sense, thinking that Poe was the son of two war heroes. Finn thought he might have even guessed it before, if he had ever stopped to give the matter any thought.

“My dad, Kes, was a commando,” Poe went on, “He fought alongside General Solo on Endor.”

Finn felt a tightening in his chest at the mention of Han Solo, a stirring of somewhat muddled memories of what had happened on Starkiller. He willed himself to pull away from that dark place and focus on what Poe was saying.

“Mom was an A-wing pilot, one of the best. Her name was Shara.”

Looking down at Poe’s face, Finn could see warmth and shadows passing quickly over the man’s features, as if small clouds were chasing each other past the sun above. The pilot fell silent.

“Guess we know who you take after, then,” Finn said, trying to coerce his friend back into the present.

“Yeah, no doubt about that,” Poe looked up at Finn, and it seemed that there was more light than dark in his eyes again, “I think you would’ve like her.”

Finn had no doubt of that. He formed an image of the woman – _Shara_ , he reminded himself – in his mind, all tan skin and dark, permanently toussled hair. Easy smiles offered freely and frequently, so much like Poe’s.

It was strange how he could conjure up an image of Poe’s mother so easily, yet, when it came to his own parents...

Suddenly, the D’Qar sun did not feel quite as warm on his skin. He brought his knees up and hugged them against his chest, even as his back protested the new angle.

“I don’t remember anything about my parents,” he said quietly, unsure whether or not he even wanted Poe to hear it.

Clearly he had. Finn saw him moving, out of the corner of his eye, to support himself on his elbows and look up at him more easily. He didn’t have to look over at Poe to feel the other man’s eyes trained on him.

“I don’t remember anything before the First Order,” he continued, mostly to his own knees. “My first memory is of standing in line with a bunch of other kids my age. We were three or four, I think, I don’t know. They were running some kind of medical test on us, and they stabbed our arms with these big needles to get samples. It really hurt. I guess that’s why I remember it.”

As if in response to his words, the scar on his back throbbed painfully. He winced – hoping that Poe wouldn’t notice and start to worry – and repositioned himself slightly.

The memory of the pain was still the most vivid detail in his mind. That and the fear he had felt, the confusion. He imagined, but didn’t remember, that on that night he must have lain awake in his bunk, as he had done on so many other nights, wishing for a home he had no recollection of.

“I don’t know if they did something to me to make me forget everything that came before the Order, or if I was just too young to remember,” he hugged his knees more tightly, almost painfully.

Anger twisted his face into a grimmace. Anger at the First Order, for what they’d done, but also at himself.

_How could you have let yourself forget?_

“Finn...” Poe’s voice was gentle, but urgent.

“I wish I did remember,” he pressed on, not giving Poe an opening, “I wish I at least knew their names and the name they gave _me_.”

He had a name now, one that Poe had given him, and he was glad for it. But it was not the same, not _enough_. It wasn’t the loss of his birthname he mourned, but the loss of everything it entailed. A family, a home, a history. A sense of where he came from, of belonging.

An ugly feeling coiled itself around Finn’s heart, a longing that was almost like jealousy, and he pushed it down resolutely. He would not allow himself to be jealous of Poe or anybody else for having that which he had never had. What he desperately wanted to and could not have.

He felt more than saw Poe moving to sit next to him, so close he was almost a warm presence against Finn’s side. The pilot was silent for a long moment, while Finn worked through his churning thoughts and tried to convince the muscles of his face to relax.

Finally, Poe decided to speak.

“My father was never really the mystic type, but mom was. She new Luke Skywalker, so I guess the guy must’ve rubbed off on her a bit,” Poe chuckled a bit at that, and Finn looked at him solemnly, wondering where the pilot was going with all of this.

Poe was not discouraged. He held Finn’s gaze and went on, more earnestly now.

“When I was little, she used to tell me about the Force all the time. That it was everywhere, binding the Galaxy together and connecting all living things. She told me that this bond was strongest between the people who loved each other the most. Mothers and sons, brothers and sisters, friends, lovers...”

His hand was suddenly on Finn’s shoulder, squeezing softly and warming his skin through the layers of clothing.

“If your family is still out there, you’ll find them again.”

“You can’t know that for sure,” Finn couldn’t stop the words from escaping his mouth.

“No, I can’t, but I believe in it. And I’ll do everything I can to help you. We’ll find a way.”

Poe’s hand was still warm on his shoulder, and it brought to his mind thoughts of connections, of bonds forged by force of fate, and of fates forever intertwined. Thoughts of friends lost, and found again.

Finn’s next words brought a principle of a smile back to his lips.

“Yeah,” he said, “We’ll use the Force.”


	4. Luke Skywalker

 

The message had come through the Resistance’s communications network two days ago – Rey was coming back. And she was bringing Luke Skywalker with her.

Finn had never heard a name repeated so many times before in his life. It seemed like everywhere he went on the base, at any time of day or night, someone would be saying those two words. _Luke Skywalker_. Always the two, together, never just one or the other. It was like a prayer, a mantra, an incantation repeated in hushed tones and half-concealed behind hands.

The entire base thrummed in anticipation of Rey’s return and Skywalker’s arrival. And so did Finn’s heart, though much more due to the former than to the latter.

Poe stood beside him on the tarmac, under the warm D’Qar sun, fidgeting uncomfortably in his dress uniform. He looked smart, but decidedly ill at ease. Poe clearly preferred the comfort of his garish orange flightsuit to the constricting lines of the more formal uniform. Finn preferred it, too.

BB-8 was also there, looking shinier than Finn had ever seen it. He suspected that the little droid had informed Poe that it wanted to look its best for Rey’s return, and that the pilot had – naturally – obliged it by polishing it to a radiant sheen.

As for Finn, he was wearing his usual attire of dark pants and t-shirt – though these were new – and Poe’s jacket – though this was much mended. Not long after he had woken up and been released from the medbay, Finn had been offered a standard-issue Resistance uniform, not too different from Poe’s own, with the exception of the bars that were present on the Commander’s chest. And, though Finn now considered himself a proud member of the Resistance, he had politely declined the offer. The idea of getting back into uniform, whatever its color or affiliation, still did not sit well with him.

Just as Finn was starting to feel hot and uncomfortable between the glow of the sun and the heat reflected by the tarmac, Poe grabbed his elbow and pointed him toward a small shiny point near the horizon. The rest of the crowd saw it, too, and erupted into a renewed wave of chatter.

The words Luke Skywalker were heard many times, in the same reverent whispers as always. And, Finn noticed, Rey’s name was also passed around, in somewhat similar tones.

Minutes later, the _Millennium Falcon_ had landed lightly before the crowd, and its loading ramp had descended to touch the ground.

The first two forms to disembark where one massive and hairy and the other squat and shiny. Chewbacca and the little droid, which Finn had been told was called R2-D2, made a straight line for General Organa and began to converse quickly with her in grunts and beeps. Chewbacca enveloped the small General in a massive hug.

The next figure to come down the ramp was dressed differently than the last time Finn had seen her, but there was no mistaking her. Rey made her way down slowly, looking around expectantly. Then, spotting Finn in the crowd – thanks no doubt, to his frantic waving – she broke into a run.

Which she had to halt abruptly to keep from falling over an overeager BB-8.

Rey crouched down with a fond smile and the two began a rapid-fire exchange in Basic and Binary. Then, seeing Finn take a few steps forward, Rey smoothed a hand over the droid’s head and whispered a few more words to it before getting up.

She practically leaped the last few meters that separated them and almost knocked Finn back a couple of steps as she collided with him. Finn spared a thought to be glad that his back was already fully healed, then lifted Rey off the ground and spun her around a few times, both of them laughing ecstatically.

Wanting to say so much, but apparently unable to articulate any of it, the two simply held their embrace and grinned at each other, cheeks aching from the sustained effort. Rey finally broke the stare to look over Finn’s shoulder at somebody else.

“Hello again,” Poe said amicably.

Rey beamed up at the pilot for a moment, then threw her arms around him, as if deciding that she would not settle for such a decorous greeting. Poe seemed surprised for only half a second, before bringing his arms up to circle around Rey’s back and give her a squeeze.

Finn thought he heard her whisper something like “Thank you for taking care of him” into Poe’s ear, but he wasn’t sure.

Right then, his attention was drawn back to the _Falcon_ by another figure coming down the ship’s ramp. A hushed silence rolled over the gathered crowd, and there was no doubt in Finn’s mind about who this was.

There was a strange quality to the man’s blue eyes, like they were somehow too young for his weathered face, too bright.

Being in the presence of Luke Skywalker made Finn feel small. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, but rather a sense of awe, like what he’d sometimes felt upon admiring the wide curve of a planet from orbit.

Rey had disentangled herself from Poe and turned around to watch her master’s descent with keen interest. She grabbed Finn and Poe, each by an arm, and pulled them close, so that the three of them stood shoulder to shoulder.

Luke Skywalker stopped halfway down the ramp at the sound of his name.

“Hello, Luke,” the imposing voice carried easily over the open field, belying the small size of its owner. The way the woman said his name had nothing in common with the reverent tones other people always adopted. It was warm and well-worn, like an old, familiar piece of clothing.

 _Like Poe’s jacket_ , Finn decided.

“I hope you didn’t make it too hard for poor Rey to drag you back here,” General Organa continued evenly.

“I tried, at first, but she was just too stubborn,” like General Organa’s, Luke’s voice also seemed to exceed his stature.

“Then the two of you are well matched on that front,” her tone was scolding, but there was a smile twisting her lips.

Luke huffed slightly and continued to walk down the _Falcon_ ’s ramp. General Organa moved to meet him at the bottom. They considered each other for a heartbeat, then embraced.

“It is so good to have you back,” the General said, resting her head against the man’s shoulder.

“I’m glad to be back,” Luke placed a hand against her braided hair, “You might not think so, but I _have_ missed you, Leia.”

There it was again, that same warm, well-worn tone. It might have been weird to hear someone call General Organa by her first name, but on Luke’s lips the name simply seemed to belong. It seemed like it had been waiting there to be said for a long time.

Finn pressed himself more tightly against Rey – who smiled up at him – and thought again about family and about bonds held together by the Force. Or by will. Or love.


	5. Muran

 

Poe Dameron made a point of introducing Finn to, or at least pointing out and naming everyone they ran across while walking around the base. It was a lot to take in, but Finn found that he was quite good at remembering all these new names. Then again, memorizing names was much easier than memorizing two-letter-four-number designations that all sounded awfully similar. At any rate, it was more enjoyable.

Finn was currently sharing a table in the mess hall with Poe and two of the first people the pilot had ever introduced him to: Captain Karé Kun and Captain Iolo Arana. At the time of their first meeting, Poe had presented them as “the two biggest laserbrains Finn would ever have the displeasure of meeting”. Finn had quickly found out that what that actually meant was that Karé, Iolo and Poe had been friends for a very long time. So long that the three had reached a point in their relationship at which they mostly communicated through bickering and cracks at each other’s expense.

“All I’m saying is that there is no way anyone but him could have pulled off that maneuver like that...” Iolo was saying.

The three pilots were engaged in a discussion that had all the features of one they had had a million times before. And it did not look like this was the time they would finally be able to reach an agreement.

“Yeah, yeah. We all know you’ve got a raging boner for Luke Skywalker,” Karé said, drawing circles in the air with her fork.

“The man is a living legend!” said Iolo with mock affront, “As a fellow pilot and insurgent scum, I have a healthy dose of respect and admiration for him!”

“Yeah, we’ve all seen you _respecting and admiring_ him every time he walks by, Iolo,” Poe smiled slyly over the rim of his cup.

“Notice me, Commander Skywalker!” Karé cried in an affected voice, clasping both hands against her chest.

Poe and Karé burst into raucous laughter, and Finn couldn’t help but to join in.

“Assholes!”

In seconds, Iolo had turned his napkin into two balls, which he then flung at Poe and Karé in turn. Both dodged easily and gracefully.

 _Pilot reflexes_ , thought Finn.

“Alright, fine,” the Keshian went on, when the rest of the table seemed to have calmed down somewhat, “Who do _you_ think was the best pilot in the Rebellion, then?”

“Han Solo,” said Karé easily, leaning back on her chair.

“Predictable,” Iolo spared her only a quick glance, “Finn?”

It took Finn a couple of seconds to realize the pilot was asking his opinion. He was not expecting to be included in this conversation.

“Oh no. I’m gonna sit this one out. I don’t know that much about pilots,” he said, raising his hands defensively.

“Nonsense! You have flawless taste when it comes to picking them!” Poe leaned over to nudge Finn’s side with his elbow and to give him a quick wink.

Karé and Iolo responded by rolling their eyes so hard they looked like they were trying to look up through their skulls. Karé also punctuaded her demonstration by gagging dramatically.

“Alright. Poe? Favorite pilot from the Rebellion?” Iolo pressed on.

Poe’s face instantly split into a satisfied grin. His time had come.

“And don’t say your mother!” Karé and Iolo interjected loudly and in perfect unison.

“Fine...” Poe crossed his arms and looked up at the ceiling for a long moment before casting his vote, “Wedge Antilles.”

Finn recognized the name from his instruction on the history of the Galactic Civil War, but he didn’t expect the response it elicited from the other pilots.

“Antilles?! Really?!” Iolo exclaimed dismally.

“Unbelievable!” Karé pushed her food tray away and threw her hands up.

“Now you sound like Muran!” Iolo again.

Now, _there_ was a name Finn did not recognize. The question was out of his mouth before he knew it:

“Who’s Muran?”

As soon as the words had left his mouth, Finn wished he could inhale them back. He noticed – too late – the somber look that had descended over all three pilots, their hands hovering idly next to their forgotten dinners.

The three stayed silent for so long that Finn was beginning to think that they weren’t going to answer his question. In the end, it was Karé who spoke up.

“He was a member of our squadron, back when we were still flying for the New Republic,” she paused, seemed to brace herself for what she was going to say next, “He died.”

“He was killed,” Finn was startled by Poe’s voice, which was lacking several degrees of its usual warmth. The man never took his eyes off his food as he spoke, “by the First Order.”

Karé and Iolo also seemed suddenly very interested in examining their trays. They nodded slightly at Poe’s statement.

And that was that.

The rest of their meal passed in a silence that made Finn’s skin feel tight all over. He wanted to say something, to apologize to them. Though, for what, he wasn’t entirely sure.

 

 

Finn found Poe again later that evening, sitting cross-legged on the floor of his quarters, tinkering with BB-8. He had a datapad on his lap and was using a tool to fiddle with the open controls on the droid’s spherical body.

Finn knocked against the open door and got a quick glance and a flat “hey” as greeting. It wasn’t exactly what Finn would call encouraging, but he had come all the way here and he wasn’t going to turn back.

“I’m sorry. About earlier,” he finally got around to saying.

He got another quick glance from Poe, eyebrows slightly raised.

“At dinner,” he added, prodding.

“You’re gonna have to help me out here, buddy. ‘Cuz I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, gesturing with the tool in his hand and continuing to avoid Finn’s eyes.

“Yeah, you do. You’ve been acting weird ever since I asked about Muran.”

That, at last, got Poe to look up at him squarely. The pilot opened his mouth to reply, then seemed to decide against it. He shut his mouth rather forcibly, and turned back to focus again on BB-8, shaking his head slightly.

The man seemed intent on ignoring him. It was incredibly childish and was starting to chafe against Finn’s patience. He thought about turning away and stomping off to his own bedroom – which, he admitted, was also childish – but he was not ready to let this go just yet.

“You’re upset,” he said. It came out sounding like an accusation, and Finn kicked himself mentally.

Poe’s eyes narrowed, staring at a fixed point on BB-8’s body with the concentrated intensity of a laser beam.

“Poe-“

“Yes!” Poe cut him off violently, voice rising, “Yes, alright?! I am kriffing upset!”

Poe threw his tool against the floor with a wild jerk of his arm, then immediately brought both hands up to tug at his hair.

BB-8 let out a worried little chirp and swivelled to look between Poe and Finn. Finn was pretty sure he felt just as uneasy as the little droid.

 _Run_ , he thought at it, _get out of here. You don’t have to be here for this._

Poe let his hands fall to his lap and looked up at Finn. There was a tension around the pilot’s eyes that Finn had never seen before.

“I am upset! But it’s got nothing to do with you!” he said, voice only slightly more controled than before.

That set something off in Finn.

“Yes, it does!” he snapped loudly. Then, afraid that everyone in the barracks would hear them, he lowered his voice, “You said Muran was killed by the First Order.”

The look of incredulity on Poe’s face was almost comical.

“Wha-?! Do you really think I blame _you_ for this? For anything that the First Order did?” his pitch was all over the place, high and uneven.

 “Why not? Plenty of people here do,” Finn threw his arm out in a wide arc, as if to indicate all the people he meant.

He was being petty and unfair, and he knew it, but he didn’t care.

He saw the way some of the people around the base looked at him, dark glances out of the corner of their eyes. He heard their hurriedly supressed whispering as he came around corners, a single word carrying into his ears – _stormtrooper_.

And the worst thing was that a part of him thought they were right. What made him think he had any right to be there? To ask for acceptance and protection from these people, so many of whom had already lost so much, too much. So many of whom had been hurt by the First Order in grotesque, intimate ways.

He stared at the floor, with ears feeling warm and a sick knot in his stomach.

He had no right to ask these people to forget about his past when he himself could not.

“Hey, _hey_ ,” Poe was getting to his feet, fast and ungracefully. He took two long strides and came face to face with Finn on the doorway.

Finn almost backed away, instinct taking control of his body, fight ot flight, before he realized that Poe didn’t look angry anymore. His eyebrows were knitted together and his eyes still looked dark, but the emotion in them was different now. He gripped the front of Finn’s jacket – Poe’s jacket – and looked down at it quickly before looking up into Finn’s eyes again.

“Don’t you ever, _ever_ think like that, you hear me?” Poe’s voice was little more than a whisper, but it hit Finn with more intensity than his previous yelling had, “You’ve done more to help us fight the First Order than nearly anybody here. I know that, General Organa knows that, and everybody on this base with more than two working braincells knows that. The assholes who are still going around pointing fingers at you have got bantha shit for brains. And, if the General hadn’t given me a direct order _not_ to do this, I would kick their asses all the way from here to Coruscant.”

Finn couldn’t stop himself from chuckling at that. He looked down, smiling and feeling his face heating up with a different kind of embarassment than the one he’d felt before.

Had Poe really spoken to General Organa about this?

Poe bent down a bit to get back into Finn’s line of sight, to force the ex-stormtrooper to look him in the eyes.

“You’re a _good man_ , Finn,” he said earnestly, not for the first time, “Whatever it was that those bastards tried to do to you, whatever brainwashing they put you through, it didn’t work. You were never a stormtrooper, not in any way that counted.”

Finn’s breathing had become shallower, and he didn’t know if it was because of Poe’s words or because of the way the other man was crowding into his personal space. He didn’t want him to back away, wanted to keep him there for as long as he could. 

“Thank you, Poe,” he said with an uncooperative tongue.

Poe was so close.

“Don’t mention it, buddy,” Poe said, drawing back suddenly and releasing his grip on Finn’s jacket.

He gave Finn a couple of friendly – awkward – pats on the shoulder and turned back to continue working on BB-8. 

And that was that.


	6. BB-8

 

At some point in the middle of the hectic process of getting everything ready to move to their new base – well, new-old base – Finn had started to catalog all of the names Poe Dameron used to refer to his droid. This was due, mostly, to the fact that packing all of the Resistance’s possessions into boxes was both extremely time-consuming and extremely boring.

A man had to find ways to entertain his mind in these situations. So Finn had a mental list of names going, and it was starting to get pretty long.

First and foremost, of course, was the standard _Beebee-Ate_ – or sometimes just _Beebee_ – used by Poe during meetings and at other times when he was trying to play the part of a formal, straight-faced commanding officer.

After that, there was _buddy_ – and it’s variations, _bud_ and _lil’ buddy_ – which made at least one appearance almost every day. Finn couldn’t help but notice that these were also Poe’s preferred forms of address for other droids, other pilots, mechanics, technicians, Black One, Rey, Finn himself, and the uncooperative caf machine in the mess hall. Basically, anyone – and anything – who was not above Poe in the Resistance’s chain of command was at risk of being called _buddy_ on any given day.

Moving further down the list, there was the excessively long _my-vertically-challenged-and-spherical-friend_. That, Finn had only been witness to a couple of times, and, if his developing understanding of binary was right – and he was pretty sure it was – BB-8 was not at all fond of this one.

Other nicknames, such as _pal_ , _partner_ and _lil’ guy_ , also made appearances, though less frequently. And, at times when Poe was feeling particularly sappy and thought no one was listening, there was the rare _baby_.

Finn had a growing awareness of just how fond and fiercely protective of BB-8 Poe really was. Finn figured that he should probably have known that from the moment when Poe had insisted on going back to that hellish sandpit called Jakku to retrieve his droid. Sure, BB-8 had been holding a map to the mythic savior of the Galaxy at the time, but Finn suspected that the man would’ve risked his life to go back for his droid even if that hadn’t been the case.

There had also been a memorable occasion on which a radar technician had nearly tripped over a distracted BB-8, and had muttered “Watch it, _rustball_ ,” before walking away irritably.

Finn had turned to see Poe looking at the technician with the eyes of a man who was thinking of good places to dispose of a body.

No bodily harm ever came to the technician. However, the man did walk into his station one morning to find every inch of his desk and equipment covered in pictures and diagrams of astromech droids. General Organa was mysteriously unable to determine who were the responsible parties.

Finally, at the bottom of Finn’s mental list, was not a name that Poe used for BB-8, but rather the opposite. As Finn’s grasp of Binary improved – thanks, in equall parts, to Rey’s patient tutoring and to BB-8’s incessant chattter – he noticed that, unlike other droids, Poe’s astromech did not seem to refer to its owner as _master_. In fact, he was nearly certain that the short sequence of beeps BB-8 used when addressing the man meant simply _Poe._


	7. Slip

 

The Resistance was finally getting settled in its new-old base – _Echo Base_ , once the home of the Rebel Alliance on Hoth – and if the process of packing everything into boxes had been long and boring, the opposite process was doubly so. The already slow process was made even slower by the many cumbersome layers of clothing most people had to wear against the hothian cold.

Finn wasn’t bothered by the cold. He had gotten used to it long ago, having spent most of his life on Starkiller. The planet-weapon had had only two seasons – winter and dead of winter – and the cadet’s uniform Finn had worn most of the time had offered little in the way of protection against the subzero temperatures.

So now, moving boxes around inside the shelter of the base’s old armory, Finn had shed all but his last layer of clothing. He was even starting to think about rolling up the sleeves of his shirt.

He had been put in charge of organizing the Resistance’s arsenal, on account of his extensive knowledge of all types of military equipment. This meant that he had to unbox and shelve everything they had brought over from D’Qar, but also sort through stacks of equipment that were left behind by the Rebels in their hurried evacuation.

It was boring work, but not as boring as the menial tasks Finn had been assigned as a cadet in the First Order, so he didn’t mind all that much.

Still, he had been trying to get this one crate open for the last five minutes and it was really starting to irritate him. The thing was frozen shut. He finally resorted to using a crowbar to pry the stupid thing open. It took some muscle, but it worked.

He pushed the heavy lid off, hoping to find something inside that would be worth all this trouble. He was taken aback by what he saw.

A pile of white fragments of different shapes and sizes lay inside the crate in complete disarray, sharp edges sticking out every which way like shards of ice. It was clear that everything had simply been dumped in without any regard for order, but Finn could easily tell what each of the parts were just by glancing at them. Here a breastplate, there a shoulder guard, gauntlets, a greave, part of a belt. Finn knew them all as well as he knew his own face.

He could tell that there was more than one armor set inside the crate, and he spared a quick thought to wonder how they had been acquired by the Rebellion. His eyes were drawn to a large, domed piece, half buried among all the rest. He reached inside the mess a drew it out.

It was an old imperial stormtrooper helmet, old-fashioned and outdated compared to the sleek new ones used by the First Order. Still, the resemblance was obvious and it caused mixed memories and emotions to flare up inside Finn’s mind.

Finn brought the headgear up so that he could look into its black lifeless eyes. His own reflection, doubled and distorted, stared back at him from the dark glass of the goggles. He tipped his head forward, so that his forehead rested against the helmet’s smooth surface. It felt cold.

Finn let his eyes fall shut, and images flashed behind his eyelids. Memories of another cold planet, of standing at attention among endless rolls of white armors, blasters held steadily. Another memory, of looking down from a raised platform at a see of white helmets. Another, of armor being removed at the end of a long day, and of familiar faces and bodies coming into view. Finally, he remembered a single white helmet – and the face he couldn’t see, but knew was behind it – and bloodstained fingers coming up to smear red across his vision.

He drew back from this memory, letting out a sharp breath and opening his eyes. As soon as he did, he became aware of someone watching him and looked over to see a familiar figure standing at the door to the armory, eyes trained on him.

Poe was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over what Finn thought were far too many layers of clothing.

Poe hated the cold. And he made sure everyone in the base knew this by complaining loudly and often. This had gotten him scolded by General Organa on at least one occasion – “If I can suck it up and survive the weather on Hoth _a second time_ , then so can you, Commander”.

Though no one, _no one_ , on Echo Base despised the cold more than Rey. Finn felt sorry for her, really. It was clear that the desert child had no experience with the type of wet, biting cold that was a permanent feature of Hoth. More than once, she had come into the mess hall for breakfast still cocooned inside her blankets. It was hard to get more than grunts out of her at those times, and Finn usually waited until her mood had improved slightly before trying to strike up a conversation with her.

“You okay there, buddy?” Poe asked easily, but with a slight crease between his eyebrows.

“Yeah, I was just...” he looked down at the helmet in his hands, searching for the right word, “Reminiscing.”

“I’m gonna take a wild guess here and say that those weren’t happy memories you were thinking about.”

“No. I don’t know. More or less,” Finn frowned and shook his head, moving to place the stormtrooper helmet on a high shelf dug into the icy wall.

Poe simply followed him with his eyes, apparently waiting for him to go. So Finn did.

“I was thinking about my squad-mates,” he turned to look at Poe, then added unnecessarily, “in the Order.”

The pilot uncrossed his arm and pushed away from the doorframe. This time he did say something to prompt Finn to continue:

“Tell me about them,” he was looking at Finn intently.

Finn drew a slow breath through his nose. The cold air felt bracing.

“Well, there were four of us. Me. FN-2000, we called him Zeroes. FN-2199 was Nines. And FN-2003 was Slip.”

“Why did you call him Slip?”

“Just what you’d imagine,” Finn shrugged, “He was clumsy, always messing up and falling behind the rest of the squad. Not just during training, in everything. Zeroes came up with the nickname. I think we were about nine or ten at the time. I thought it was cruel, and I meant to tell him to cut it out, but Slip didn’t seem to mind. He actually seemed to _like_ it. Always laughed along with Zeroes and Nines when they poked fun at him. I think it made him feel like he belonged. I mean, all the other cadets had nicknames...”

“You never had a nickname, did you?” Poe asked cautiously.

“No. I was always just FN-2187 or eight-seven, for short,” sorrow tugged at the corners of his mouth, but Finn wasn’t entirely sure why.

He realized that he was afraid to continue, wanted to recoil from what he knew was coming next. But he told himself that there was no turning back anymore.

“Anyway, Slip, he had a hard time keeping up with the rest of us, and I was always trying to help him. Zeroes and Nines didn’t like that. They thought I should just let him fend for himself, that I should stop protecting him.”

_And, in the end, I couldn’t protect him._

“He died,” he raised his eyes to look straight into Poe’s, “On Jakku. Shot pretty much as soon as he stepped foot out of the transport.”

Poe went very still, and Finn saw his fists curling inside his thick gloves. Finn waited for the other man to speak first.

“Finn... I...”

“I know,” he interrupted. It would be easier if he just said it, “It was you who shot him. I’d already figured it out.”

“When?” Poe’s voice was tense, clipped.

“On that same night. When Kylo Ren stopped your blaster shot I recognized it as the same kind that had hit Slip. And the place where you were hiding matched the angle of the shot.”

“You knew from the start that I had killed him,” Poe took a step toward him, and his voice started to gain volume, “and you still decided to rescue me?”

“You said it yourself, I needed a pilot,” Finn smiled at the other man, but the emotion never reached his eyes, “and it’s not like I had a grudge against you. I’ve never blamed you for Slip’s death.”

“How could you not blame me?”

“The same way you don’t blame _me_ for Muran’s death.”

“This isn’t the same thing at all! I was the one who _shot_ your friend!” Poe’s voice echoed alarmingly inside the icy cave.

“He wasn’t my friend,” Finn snapped back, and it sounded harsh, much harsher than he had meant for it to be, “I didn’t have any friends in the First Order. It wasn’t like that. You were supposed to bond with the other soldiers and to have their backs, but if somebody fell behind or was captured on a mission you were supposed to abandon them to their fate. No sentiment. Your loyalty should be to the First Order, not to other troopers.”

The words rang in his ears with a voice that was not his own. If he only closed his eyes, he knew that he would see the chromed surface of that helmet glaring back at him.

He barreled on, moved now by an unshakable momentum.

“Slip was dead before he even set foot on Jakku, Poe. I knew that and so did our commanding officer. Fuck, I’d bet that’s exactly the reason why she decided to deploy him even though he was recovering from a head wound. She wanted him gone so that he wouldn’t slow us down anymore.”

 _Me. So that he wouldn’t slow_ me _down._

Poe seemed rooted to the spot, mouth tight and fists clenched. Finn balled up his own fists to stop his hands from shaking,

“You did what you had to do on Jakku. If it hadn’t been your blaster shot, then it would’ve been somebody else’s. And if not on Jakku, then on some other planet, on some other mission. He was expendable. We all were.”

As soon as the last word was spoken, Finn slumped against the wall of the armory. All his energy seemed to drain out of his body now that he had finally managed to get everything out. He allowed himself to slide down the wall and come to sit on the cold hard floor, head on his hands. He felt relieved, but drained at the same time, like he had just been sick, like all the bile in his body had spilled out of his mouth.

The cold from the wall seeped through his shirt, into his back. Suddenly, he was freezing.

He only noticed that Poe had moved when a thump above his head made him look up. The pilot was leaning over him, a forearm braced against the wall. He looked tired, almost as tired as Finn felt, but there was also something else in his eyes.

The two men looked at each other for a long time before any of them spoke.

“Still,” Poe said quietly, “I _am_ sorry.”

Finn reached up and grabbed the front of Poe’s coat – _Too damn heavy. It’s not even that cold_ , he thought absently – and pulled him down gently, until Poe’s forehead pressed against his own. It felt warm, and he closed his eyes.

“I know. So am I.”

**  
**


	8. Finn

 

“You know you don’t have to keep using the name Finn, right? You could choose something else,” said Poe, unprompted, breaking the companiable silence they had been enjoying.

They were outside _Echo Base_ , walking along the perimeter of the large pen in which the tauntauns were kept during most of the day, new snow crunching under their feet. There were two of the large animals grazing peacefully some twenty meters away, and another one watched them closely from the low fence.

“I like _Finn_ ,” replied the younger man. He extended one hand to pet the tauntaun, who accepted the contact gladly.

It was true, he _did_ like Finn. He liked the way it sounded in Rey’s voice as she teased him over something silly. He liked the way it carried over in Poe’s warm tones as the pilot greeted him after a long mission. He even liked the way it sounded in BB-8’s Binary chirps and whistles. But, more than anything, he liked holding the name in his thoughts, turning it over and over in his mind when he closed his eyes at night.

“I just mean...” Poe trailed off. He leaned his hip against the pen’s fence and moved his hands in a series of vague gestures. He seemed to be trying to grab his next words out of the air.

“I mean, your whole life other people have made decisions for you, and I don’t want you to feel like you’re stuck with a name that somebody else chose.”

Seeming satisfied with this, but unsure of what to do with his hands now that he had found the right words, Poe crossed his arms and began to rub them furiously.

“Frozen hell,” Finn heard him mutter irritably.

Finn stopped petting the tauntaun, who huffed indignantly at him, and turned to face Poe fully.

“I made a choice for myself the day I decided to run away and rescue you on my way out,” he said lightly.

“Hey, you’re making it sound like rescuing me was just an afterthought, when I happen to _know_ that I was instrumental to your escape from the beginning!” Poe pointed a scolding finger at him.

“Meh,” Finn shrugged theatrically.

“Meh?” Poe sounded like someone had just compared his X-wing to a rusty speeder.

“I could probably have managed without you.”

“Oh! Oh, is that so? Is that-?!” Poe spluttered, and suddenly Finn’s face met with a handful of snow.

“Hey!”

He brushed snow from his eyes and saw that Poe was already preparing his next attack. Using a lifetime of military training to his advantage, Finn grabbed the other man, pinning his arms down and holding him against his body to keep him from getting away. With his other hand, Finn scooped up a handful of snow from the fence and shoved it down the back of Poe’s coat.

“Agh! Son of a wampa!” Poe cursed loudly, but there was laughter in his voice.

He shoved Finn away and brushed the back of his neck furiously, shaking his coat to try to dislodge the snow that was currently freezing his back.

The tauntaun watched both men with the eyes of a creature who had a very low opinion of their antics. Finn, on the other hand, found the whole scene extremely amusing. He doubled over with laughter, hugging his stomach and bracing one hand against the fence.

Poe was laughing, too, in between expletives.

The pilot finally seemed satisfied with the amount of snow he had managed to remove from his clothes.

“Alright, alright, truce!” he panted, holding his hands up and giving one last chuckle.

He tried to fix Finn with a serious look, but his eyes were twinkling and there was a flush on his cheeks. A few snowflakes had gotten caught in his hair during the scuffle. It was a very good look for him, in Finn’s humble opinion.

“I’m serious, okay? You could pick any name you wanted. You could be called Nexor, or  Wava Kreech...”

Finn cringed.

“Or, or Luke Skywalker!”

“I’m pretty sure that one’s already taken, Poe.”

“You’re probably right. Okay, um, what about Wedge? Or, I dunno, Jacen?” the man was babbling, but either he didn’t realize it or he didn’t care, because he kept on going, “or Temmin? No, wait, forget I said that. Don’t call yourself Temmin. Not even Snap calls himself T-“

That’s when Finn decided that the best way to shut Poe up would be to haul him in by the back of the neck and lock their mouths together.

It worked.

Granted, Poe did let out a small, surprised sound at the first moment, but, after that, he was completely silent. He brought his hands up to twist in the back of Finn’s coat and pressed their bodies closer together.

Poe’s lips were chapped from the cold, and Finn gave into the temptation to lick them. That caused the pilot to tilt his head slightly and part his lips to deepen the kiss.

Finn felt like he would be happy carrying on like this for a very long time, but he forced himself to pull away after a few moments.

“Finn,” Poe half whispered, half whined. The name was a puff of warm, white breath against Finn’s lips.

“Yeah,” Finn murmured, a wicked smile twisting his lips, “I think I like _Finn_ just fine.”

Without offering any further explanation, Finn turned his back on the other man, waved a quick goodbye to the tauntaun, shoved his hands into his pockets and began to make his way back toward the base.

That meant that he did not get to see Poe throwing his hands up, turning on the spot and fixing the tauntaun with an incredulous, outraged look – as if asking it “Can you _believe_ this?!”. Neither did he see the pilot smile fondly, shake his head and turn to follow him back into _Echo Base_.

He did, however, hear Poe calling loudly after him, voice tinged only slightly with annoyance.

“Finn! Wait up! Finn!”

The named rang over the snow and ice, into his ears, and – just for now – it was _enough_.


End file.
